The Backup Plan

by Sherryl Woods

“Always has been, especially when the news is spicy enough.” She regarded him with curiosity. “How did you pull off the appointment thing?”

  “Caught her at a weak moment,” he said, then added, “She seems to be having a lot of those. Any idea what’s up?”

  Maggie hesitated, obviously torn between her loyalty to Dinah and the sincere concern she surely must have heard in his voice. “I honestly don’t know,” she said at last. “The truth is she seems to be avoiding me. I’ve only seen her a couple of times.” She gave him a look filled with irony. “One of those was when she offered to help me land you.”

  Cord nearly choked. “What? She thought you and I…?”

  “Oh, yes. She’d heard about our big date, about how much money I spent to win you in that auction. She figured she’d help me move things along.”

  There was a bitter edge to her tone, Cord didn’t entirely understand. He studied her intently. “Did I miss something here? Was that date about more than helping out a good cause?”

  “Not for you,” she said wryly. “Which pretty much means it wasn’t for me, either.”

  Her admission caught him completely off-guard. He’d completely missed the fact that she might have been hoping for more than a nice evening. He stared at her with real regret. “I had no idea. I’m sorry, Maggie.”

  “I know,” she said. “Which is why it didn’t hurt that much. Let’s not belabor it now, please. It’s humiliating enough as it is. We should be focusing on Dinah, since we both care about her.” Her gaze narrowed. “You do care about her, right? You’re not just intent on having one of your usual flings?”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to pin a label on it,” Cord said defensively. “But I do want to help her. She’s messed up, Maggie. She’s not herself. I know some of it’s be cause of where she was and what she’s seen. I recognize all the post-traumatic stress symptoms, because I’ve been there, but there’s something else. A man, maybe. Has she said anything?”

  “Not a word. Maybe it’s about her job, though. She says she’s glad to be home, but I think she’s thoroughly unsettled without her work to go back to.”

  Cord stared at her in shock. “Hold it! Are you telling me she’s not going back, that this isn’t just some extended vacation?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure if she quit or if she was fired. She wouldn’t really say. She just said she was thinking about staying here, but she didn’t want me to say a word to anyone.” She met his gaze. “If it were anyone but you asking, I wouldn’t have said a word, but I think maybe you’re the only one she’ll let help her.”

  “What makes you think that? It’s not as if she and I are old friends.”

  “Maybe not, but at least she’s spending time with you. Her mom says she’s hiding out in her room at home and she’s certainly not confiding in me.”

  “She’s only been with me because I’ve tricked her into it,” he admitted. “It’s not as if she’s ecstatic at the prospect of seeing me. I ask too many questions. Unfortunately, she’s not answering most of them.”

  “Keep asking,” Maggie encouraged. “You need to get to the bottom of the whole job thing. She loved her work, Cord. That was her identity. She worked damn hard to get on top and I can’t imagine her giving it up easily. If it really is over, it’s no wonder she’s feeling lost. It would explain why she’d turn to your brother.”

  “Desperation,” Cord said grimly. Knowing that made him even more certain that he’d done the right thing by keeping them apart. If Bobby had known Dinah was waiting in the wings when he’d had that fight with Rianna last night, there was no telling what would have happened. They might have gravitated together for all the wrong reasons.

  “Exactly. Desperation,” Maggie confirmed. “It’s the only explanation I can come up with, but now that she knows about Bobby’s engagement, I think she’s given up that particular daydream. It never made a lick of sense in the first place. Why on earth would she choose Bobby when she could have…” Her words faltered and color bloomed in her cheeks.

  Cord got the message. He didn’t intend to go there, at least not with Dinah’s best friend. “But you really don’t have any idea why she’d take such a drastic leap and quit her job? Or why the network might fire one of their top correspondents?”

  “No idea at all. She certainly didn’t give me any clues about what happened. Maybe you should ask her.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  But even if he figured out precisely how to phrase his questions, he doubted he’d get answers that made any sense.

  12

  Dinah waited until after nine in the morning before wandering downstairs in search of breakfast. She’d been hoping to avoid her parents, her mother in particular. Unfortunately, Dorothy was still seated at the dining room table, the portable phone in one hand, a pen in the other. She was scribbling notes in her datebook. She barely glanced up long enough to take note of Dinah’s arrival.

  Dinah considered bolting to the relative safety of the kitchen, but before she could, her mother hung up and set the phone aside.

  “There you are,” she said cheerfully. “You and Cord must have been out very late, if you’re just now coming down for breakfast.”

  “It wasn’t that late,” Dinah said. “Is there more coffee?”

  “Of course. Would you like eggs? Toast? I’ll tell Maybelle.”

  “No need to tell Maybelle anything,” the house keeper said, walking into the room with a tray. “I heard voices in here.” She gave Dinah a scolding look. “About time you wandered down for breakfast. I fixed you half a grapefruit, an English muffin and a scrambled egg. Take it or leave it.”

  Dinah grinned at the imperious tone. “It’s exactly what I wanted, Maybelle.”

  “Right answer,” Maybelle said approvingly, as she poured Dinah a cup of her potent coffee. When Dinah’s mother held out her cup, Maybelle merely took it from her. “You’ve had enough. I’ll bring you decaf.”

  Dinah stared after her with amusement as she left the room. “Is there anyone else on earth who gets away with telling you what to do?” she asked her mother.

  “No one else would dare try,” her mother said, her expression filled with affection. “But I honestly don’t know what I would do without that woman. I should insist she retire, but selfishly I can’t bear the thought of her not being underfoot. She helps me clarify things.”

  What an odd thing to say, Dinah thought. Her mother always seemed so confident, so self-assured about everything. She regarded her mother curiously. “What sort of things do you ever need to have clarified?”

  “Everything. Years ago she made me see that marrying your father was the right thing to do.” She gave Dinah a rueful look. “I wasn’t convinced, you see. I knew he adored me, but I wanted something, I don’t know, more exciting, I suppose. I was a lot like you at that age. I wasn’t at all ready to settle down.”

  “You were?” Dinah tried to imagine her mother being anything other than a wife and hostess and driving force behind a dozen or more charities. That’s what she’d been bred to do, what she’d tried to teach Dinah. “I can’t imagine you in any other role.”

  “I thought I could change the world,” her mother said. “I’m not sure if I had a clue how to accomplish that, but I did know there had to be more to life than living comfortably in this little corner of it.”

  “What stopped you?”

  Her mother looked vaguely disconcerted by the question, as if she somehow hadn’t realized that it was bound to be the next one Dinah—or any reasonable person— would ask.

  “You don’t know?” her mother asked, her brow furrowed in a way that would have appalled her if she’d happened to catch herself in the mirror.

  “Know what?” Dinah responded, baffled by the odd expression on her mother’s face.

  “Somehow I always assumed you must have figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?” Dinah asked impatiently. She was suddenly filled with dread. Whatever it was her mother
thought she already knew wasn’t going to be good.

  “I got pregnant,” her mother said simply.

  The words hung in the air for an eternity. Coming from anyone else—Maggie, an acquaintance, anyone— Dinah would have known exactly what to say, but her mother? Added to the admission that she’d had an entirely different dream for her life, the pregnancy was too much. It had obviously changed everything for her mother.

  “With me,” Dinah said flatly, drawing the obvious conclusion. “I changed your life. You married Dad because of me.”

  “Please don’t look so wounded, Dinah. You were the catalyst, yes, but I married your father because it was the right thing to do, even in that day and age when people were becoming more tolerant about unwed mothers and even abortion,” her mother said. “People here weren’t more tolerant.”

  “You could have gone away,” Dinah said, but even as she spoke she realized it would have been impossible. For all her mother’s talk about wanting something more, she was at heart a traditional Southern woman who must have craved the approval of her family.

  “I suppose I could have,” her mother admitted. “But I couldn’t do that to your father. He had a right to know about you, to know you. He’s a good, decent man. We’ve had a good life together.”

  “But you didn’t love him.” Dinah had to force the hard-to-swallow words out. Discovering that she was even remotely responsible for a marriage that might not otherwise have been was difficult to absorb.

  “I did love him,” her mother corrected. “I just wasn’t in love with him.”

  “And now?” Dinah asked, terrified that one more part of her world, one more thing she’d always counted on to remain exactly the same was about to crumble under her feet.

  “I suppose you could say we’re both content,” her mother said.

  Dinah wanted to put her head down on the table and weep. She looked at the sadness in her mother’s eyes and saw a truth that went way beyond her mother’s words. If she had foolishly grasped at the straw of marrying Bobby, this was what she would have had to look forward to, being resigned to contentment. Cord had been right. She would have chafed at it sooner or later, just as it appeared her mother was doing now, whether she was ready to acknowledge it openly or not.

  “I’m so sorry, Mother.”

  “Don’t be,” her mother said. “I should never have said anything. Even grown children shouldn’t be burdened with their parents’ problems.”

  “You obviously needed to talk about it. I’m glad you felt you could tell me,” she said, uttering the lie with what she hoped was sufficient conviction to allay her mother’s guilt. “Does Dad know how unhappy you are?”

  “We certainly haven’t talked about it,” she said dryly. “That kind of conversation would send him fleeing to some trumped-up business meeting in a matter of seconds. He knows that something’s changed between us, but I suspect he doesn’t know what to do about it. Frankly, neither do I. I think it’s been easier just to drift along as we have been, living separate lives in many ways. We both carry on with the illusion that things are just fine.”

  That explained why her father didn’t get involved with any of her mother’s projects, Dinah concluded. But if they couldn’t share each other’s business, what was left for them to share? Were they even sharing a bedroom? The very question made Dinah squirm uncomfortably. The truth was, she had no idea. Her room had always been far from theirs. In the old house, she and Tommy Lee had occupied rooms in a separate wing. Here in town, their rooms were on the third floor, while their parents had a suite of rooms on the second.

  “Mother, is having me here a problem?” she asked worriedly. Were the tensions magnified by her being underfoot?

  “Don’t be absurd,” her mother said fiercely. “This is your home, Dinah. Where else would you be?”

  “I could stay with Maggie for a while, I’m sure. Or even Tommy Lee and Laurie.”

  “Absolutely not. Your father and I want you here, for as long as you can stay. We may disagree about many things these days, but never about that.”

  But that clearly couldn’t last forever, Dinah realized with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. A part of her wanted to lash out at both her parents for allowing her view of their marriage to be turned on its head, for disrupting the comfortable world she’d retreated to. A more generous part of her was filled with compassion for her mother, who’d never had a real chance to discover who she might become.

  Impulsively, Dinah stood up and went around the table to give her mother a hug. “I think you’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”

  Her mother looked up, tears spilling over and down her cheeks. That, too, was a shock. Dinah had never seen her mother shed a tear before.

  “You have no idea what that means to me, especially coming from you, but I’m not at all brave, Dinah. In fact, I’ve spent my whole life simply doing what was expected. I suppose that’s what I’ll go right on doing.”

  “You don’t have to,” Dinah told her. “If you’re unhappy, Mother, do something about it. Don’t drift along another day wasting even one more of the precious few minutes we’re given on this earth.”

  Her mother gave her a pointed look. “That advice could apply to you, as well. Haven’t you been drifting ever since you came home? The only time I see you looking the least bit alive is when you’re with Cordell.”

  Dinah had known that sooner or later they were bound to get back to Cord. She simply hadn’t expected her mother to read the situation so clearly.

  “I don’t want to spend too much time with Cord,” she said.

  “Why? Because he scares you?” her mother asked perceptively. “That’s a good thing, don’t you think?”

  “Cord doesn’t scare me,” Dinah insisted.

  Her mother’s lips twitched with undisguised amusement. “Oh, really?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then you’ll be seeing him again soon?”

  “No,” she said flatly. “I wouldn’t have seen him last night, if the two of you hadn’t tricked me into it.”

  “And the evening was a disaster, then?” her mother asked innocently. “You didn’t have fun?”

  “It was…” She searched for an innocuous word. “Pleasant.”

  “You spent an evening out with Cordell and that’s the best you can come up with?” her mother said with undisguised disbelief. “The man is seriously hot. Even I’m not too old to appreciate that.”

  A laugh bubbled up before Dinah could stop it. “Mother!”

  “Well, he is,” her mother said unrepentantly. “And you see it, too, which is why you’ve been so intent on avoiding him.”

  “Maybe I just don’t think there’s any point in starting something that won’t go anywhere,” Dinah retorted.

  “And why won’t it go anywhere?” her mother asked reasonably. “Because you’re leaving?”

  “Yes,” Dinah said at once, seizing on the obvious, most believable excuse.

  Her mother’s gaze narrowed. “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” she admitted.

  “Then let me offer you a piece of advice I failed to heed. Carpe diem. In case you don’t know, it means seize the day. It’s pretty much the same advice you gave me not five minutes ago.”

  “I know what it means. I just don’t know why you’d tell me to do such a thing.”

  “Because I see something in your eyes when you’re with Cord that I haven’t felt in years.”

  “What?”

  “Passion, darling. Don’t take it lightly. Love, honor, respect, decency, all of those things are solid and enduring, but the greatest gift any of us can be given is passion, whether it’s for a person or a job. I don’t see it when you talk about your work anymore, but I do see it when you’re with Cordell. Grab on to it with every thing you’ve got.”

  Dinah didn’t want to acknowledge in any way the possibility
that her mother might be right. Instead, she asked, “What about you, Mother? What are you passionate about?”

  Her mother’s expression faltered at the question. “My projects, I suppose.”

  “Is that enough?” Dinah asked.

  “I’ve made it enough,” her mother said quietly.

  But Dinah could tell from the emptiness in her voice that it wasn’t nearly enough. And that made her heart ache. Maybe they were two of a kind, after all.

  Dorothy sat at the dining room table long after Dinah had disappeared upstairs. She had a million and one calls left to make, but she couldn’t seem to work up the enthusiasm. It seemed as if she’d made the exact same calls to the exact same people for way too many years now. She was the go-to woman, the one everyone in town expected to pull off fund-raising miracles.

  Over time, she’d assembled list upon list of the best caterers, the best donors, the best hotel ballrooms, the best florists. She could call any of them on a moment’s notice and put together an event that would dazzle. Was her legacy going to be that she knew how to get people to part with their money?

  Ironically there was no one on any of those lists who she considered to be a friend, at least not one to whom she would divulge the things that were troubling her. Perhaps that was why she’d said too much when Dinah had given her an opening just now. She was searching for some meaning to her life and she wasn’t finding it on her own. She’d hoped that maybe her daughter could shed some light on it.

  Certainly there was an important place in the world for what she did. Arts organizations, children’s charities, the homeless, historic preservation projects all needed more money than cities, states or the federal government could provide. And as much as they needed the dollars, they also needed the attention that a successful event could muster. It helped to draw in new volunteers for the shelters, docents for the museums, new audiences for the arts.

  It wasn’t as if she’d wasted her life. It was just that lately she was feeling more and more incomplete, as if there was something more she should be doing to fulfill herself and not just the charity coffers.